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Source: Harvard Health Blog
Condition: Heart Attack
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Total 39 results found since Jan 2013.
E-cigarettes: Good news, bad news
Follow me at @JohnRossMD
Americans are confused about electronic cigarettes. A recent poll showed that the public was about evenly split between those who thought that electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, were less harmful than conventional cigarettes, and those who believed that e-cigarettes were as bad as or worse than regular cigarettes.
Unfortunately, there is no long-term safety data about e-cigarettes. What information we do have suggests that e-cigarettes have a complex mix of potential harms and benefits.
E-cigarettes: Less deadly than regular cigarettes
First, the good news: e-cigarettes are almost certainly le...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - July 25, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Behavioral Health Cancer Lung disease Prevention Smoking cessation Source Type: news
A bummer for kids: Nasal flu vaccine not effective
Follow me at @drClaire
Every year, many of my patients have been able to skip the needle — and still get vaccinated against the flu. That was the great thing about the nasal spray version of the flu vaccine, known as the LAIV (live attenuated influenza vaccine): kids scared of needles could get a squirt up each nostril and be all set.
This coming flu season, everyone is getting the shot.
It turns out that the nasal spray just didn’t work that well. Despite studies from the 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 flu seasons that seemed to show that the nasal spray actually worked better than the shot in children ages 2-8 years, over t...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 28, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Cold and Flu Infectious diseases Parenting Prevention Source Type: news
Farewell to the fasting cholesterol test?
At a recent meeting I offered a visitor lunch which she declined with obvious regret. She was hungry, and it was noon. But she was headed to her annual physical, and eating beforehand would mean returning another morning for a fasting cholesterol level. Most of us can relate to her annoyance, but thankfully this may soon be a thing of the past.
Doctors have traditionally ordered cholesterol tests to be drawn after an overnight fast. But this requirement causes a significant burden on both sides of the health care equation. Most people hate to fast. Skipping meals is particularly difficult for active people, people with dia...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 16, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Health Heart Health Prevention Screening Tests and procedures Source Type: news
The many ways volunteering is good for your heart
If you do volunteer work, whether it’s at a school, soup kitchen, or senior center, perhaps you’ve experienced the emotional rewards of donating your time. What you might not realize, however, is that volunteering may offer some added advantages for your heart.
“There’s a growing body of research showing that volunteering is associated with better physical and mental health outcomes,” says Eric S. Kim, a research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A study he co-authored, published in Social Science and Medicine earlier this year, found that volunteers were more likely to use preventive healt...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 3, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Behavioral Health Healthy Aging Heart Health Prevention Source Type: news
Can aspirin protect against cancer?
The other day, a fit 50-year-old man came to me for a visit to review his health. As we discussed his (generally good) efforts to take care of himself, he said, “I’ve been wondering if I should take an aspirin every day. I read somewhere that it can prevent cancer.”
As a clinician, I really love it when people come in with questions that stretch my thinking. I have a stock set of answers to the “does aspirin prevent heart disease” question, but I didn’t have an easy answer to the cancer prevention question. What were the data? What should I be recommending? Is it true for everyone? Or maybe just for some people...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 20, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Lori Wiviott Tishler, MD, MPH Tags: Cancer Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Prevention Source Type: news
Diabetes drug pioglitazone could get personal: Neither panacea, nor peril
When I was in training, one of my beloved mentors declared, “I never use a drug until it’s been on the market for 20 years.” I was young enough then that I couldn’t fathom being a doctor for 20 years, let alone waiting two decades to use a new drug. As my career has progressed, I’ve seen many new drugs released to the market. Some of them are truly miraculous, bringing people longer, healthier, and more productive lives. Many of them have not withstood the test of time. More than a few have even been taken off the market. Even though the Food and Drug Administration diligently reviews each new medicine before it...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 5, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Lori Wiviott Tishler, MD, MPH Tags: Diabetes Drugs and Supplements pioglitazone thiazolidinediones Source Type: news
High blood pressure: Why me?
“I go to the gym, and I never add salt. So why do I have high blood pressure?” Despite its astonishing prevalence of one in three Americans, many people struggle with the diagnosis of high blood pressure, or hypertension. It’s worth exploring why, because being an active participant in your care is crucial for optimal blood pressure control.
Certain features make any diagnosis easier to accept:
First, people are more likely to accept a diagnosis if they have symptoms. A person with cough and fever will believe a diagnosis of pneumonia. But someone who feels fine would not.
Next, people more readily accept a diagnosi...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - May 2, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Naomi D. L. Fisher, MD Tags: Behavioral Health Health care Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Screening high blood pressure Source Type: news
Understanding the heart attack gender gap
Imagine someone in the throes of a heart attack. If you pictured a man clutching his chest in agony, that’s understandable. At younger ages, men face a greater risk of heart disease than women. On average, a first heart attack — the most common manifestation of this prevalent disease — strikes men at age 65. For women, the average age of a first heart attack is 72.
However, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States for both genders. In fact, since 1984, more women have died of heart disease than men each year, although that is partly because women generally live longer than men.
So why do middl...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - April 15, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Julie Corliss Tags: Health Heart Health Women's Health Source Type: news
Decline in dementia rate offers “cautious hope”
“The number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias will grow each year as the size and proportion of the U.S. population age 65 and older continue to increase. The number will escalate rapidly in coming years as the baby boom generation ages.”
2015 Alzheimer’s disease Facts and Figures
Despite these alarming projections, a report from a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) offered a few words of encouragement. Researchers from the longstanding Framingham study found that the rate of dementia has declined over the course of three decades.
Framingham researchers had been study...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - March 9, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Alzheimer's Disease Behavioral Health Brain and cognitive health Caregiving Healthy Aging Memory Mental Health Prevention cognitive decline dementia Source Type: news
Only the overworked die young
Follow me at @JohnRossMD
Billy Joel was on to something. As the singer-songwriter suggested in “Movin’ Out,” working too hard really can give you a “heart attack-ack-ack…” And, as a recent study has also shown, stroke may be an even bigger problem than heart attack in people who are overworked.
For the study, researchers from University College London compiled data on the relationship between working hours and heart attack risk in over 600,000 workers, as well as similar data on stroke risk in over 500,000 workers. They adjusted their data to compensate for individual workers’ differences due to healt...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 14, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Behavioral Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Prevention Stress overworked Source Type: news
Reversing the effects of the new anti-clotting drugs
The oral anticoagulant warfarin (Coumadin) became available for prescription in 1954. This anti-clotting drug commanded national attention when President Dwight Eisenhower received the drug as part of his treatment following a heart attack. No other oral anticoagulant was successfully developed and marketed in the United States until 2010.
Warfarin is a dangerous drug. Along with insulin, it is responsible for the most emergency hospitalizations due to adverse drug reactions. Whereas insulin causes low blood sugar, warfarin is notorious for the complication of major bleeding. Warfarin is plagued by hundreds of drug-drug an...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - December 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Samuel Z. Goldhaber, MD Tags: Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke anti-clotting coumadin deep-vein-thrombosis DVT Source Type: news
Do statins interfere with the flu vaccine?
Statins are powerful, unusual, and, like El Niño and Tom Cruise, not well understood. Statins have a huge upside. They improve survival after heart attacks and lower the risk of recurrent strokes. They are also the only cholesterol-lowering medications that have been clearly shown to reduce heart attacks and deaths in high-risk patients without heart disease. In addition to reducing cholesterol, statins also lower levels of inflammation in the body. Reducing inflammation probably helps statins to prevent heart attack and stroke. However, evidence is emerging that these statin effects may also have a downside, hindering th...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 30, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Cold and Flu Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Vaccines flu vaccine statins Source Type: news
Update on the SPRINT trial: Preliminary results pan out
In a previous blog, I reported on the preliminary results from SPRINT, a clinical trial that examined whether a systolic blood pressure target of 120 mm Hg or less would be better than a target of 140 mm Hg in patients with hypertension (high blood pressure). The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health issued a press release with the exciting results. Now, the full paper has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and the results appear to be as practice-changing at it initially seemed, demonstrating a stricter blood pressure goal can reduce the likelihood of dying. In ...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Deepak Bhatt, MD, MPH Tags: Health Heart Health Hypertension and Stroke Source Type: news
Kids and flu shots: Two common myths
As a pediatrician, I am really passionate about the flu shot. Influenza can be a nasty illness; every year, thousands of people are hospitalized with influenza and its complications, and some of those people die. The flu shot can protect my patients and their families, and I enthusiastically recommend it to all of them.
And yet many of them refuse, despite my best efforts. What is particularly frustrating is that many of them refuse because of misunderstandings about the flu shot. There is all sorts of misinformation out there, but here are the two most common myths:
1. The flu shot can make you sick. This is the one I hea...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - October 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Cold and Flu Vaccines flu vaccine Source Type: news
How well does calcium intake really protect your bones?
This study was a randomized controlled trial conducted among 3,800 elderly French women (average age 84) in assisted living. The women initially had a low calcium intake (around 500 mg a day), low vitamin D levels, and low bone density. Those who received 1,200 mg of calcium and 800 international units (IU) of vitamin D supplements daily for three years had a 23% lower risk of hip fracture, and a 17% lower risk of fractures over all, than those taking placebos. The women who took calcium also built bone, while those on placebos continued to lose it. Those results — reported in 1992 and 1994 — are often cited by experts...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - September 30, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Beverly Merz Tags: Drugs and Supplements Osteoporosis calcium Source Type: news
